JEANNE D'ARCS LIDELSE OG DØD

The film, directed in 1928 by Carl Theodor Dreyer, is considered to be the most artistically vivid and emotionally stirring rendition of the tale. The chief reason for its legendary reputation is the brilliant match between its timeless historical subject the trial that required Joan to defend her faith before skeptical representatives of church and state and Dreyers decision to film it primarily in relentless close-ups, using the sharply etched faces of his performers to suggest the invisible spiritual struggles going on beneath the dramas human dimensions. (David Sterritt)